Tolkien's poem to be out in 2013

Writer J.R.R. Tolkien. Photo: AFP

July's rumors of a new J.R.R. Tolkien work have been confirmed by publisher HarperCollins, which will release long-form poem The Fall of Arthur next year.

Edited by son Christopher Tolkien, the poem is presented in its unfinished and hitherto unpublished form, though select extracts were included in Humphrey Carter's J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography.

It was written prior to Tolkien's success as author of The Hobbit and adheres to a historic, Northern English meter that falls within the bounds of alliterative verse - as does well-known epic Beowulf and Seamus Heaney's 1999 Beowulf: A New Translation.

Tolkien's modernization of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, another Arthurian legend written in alliterative verse, was first published in 1925.